ISRAEL Comments turned off

David Singer: Jordan-Israel Negotiations on Trump Peace Plan Set to Bypass PLO

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

Jordan-Israel negotiations based on President Trump’s long-awaited peace plan seem increasingly likely to happen – following retired Jordanian Ambassador and former editor of the Jordan Times– Walid Sadi – flagging Jordan’s legal and sovereignty claims in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and East Jerusalem (“disputed territories”).

Sadi – in an op-ed article in the Jordan Times on 12 August – has forcefully argued that Jordan’s decision to cut off all legal and administrative relations with the disputed territories in July 1988 did not amount to Jordan ceding its claims to sovereignty for the following reasons:

“First of all, the unity of the West Bank with the East Bank was officially and constitutionally adopted on 24 of April 1950. No one disputes this fact. The Constitution of the country at the time was the 1952 Constitution, which stipulated in no uncertain terms that no part of the Kingdom shall be ceded, period. This provision makes the 1988 decision to cut off all legal and administrative relations between the two banks stopping short of ceding the West Bank to any side whatsoever. Any other interpretation of the 1988 political decision is absolutely untenable constitutionally.”

The Jordan Times is published by the Jordan Press Foundation – in which the government-owned Social Security Investment Fund has a majority stake. Wadi’s politically-charged and highly-significant article could only have been published with the knowledge and approval of Jordan’s King Abdullah.

Jordan’s claims are far superior to those of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – Jordan being the last Arab state to occupy and claim sovereignty (albeit illegally) in the disputed territories from 1948 until their loss to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

Indeed the 1964 PLO Charter made no claim to sovereignty in the disputed territories –completely negating any claimed ancient and long-standing rights accruing to its Arab populations which would outweigh the claims by Jordan to these areas – where sovereignty still remains undetermined between Arabs and Jews.

POLITICS Comments turned off

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: CONNECTICUT…THE “NUT”MEG STATE

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

Ned Lamont who defeated Incumbent Democrat Senator Lieberman in 2006 went on to defeat when Lieberman ran as an Independent is back running for Governor.Lamont is a millionaire Socialist who wants National Obamacare and Addressing Climate Change and Expanding Renewable Energy and all those lefty feel-good issues. However, he could not be worse than the Present Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy who has ruined the economy and infrastructure of Connecticut. rsk

POLITICS Comments turned off

ELECTIONS ARE COMING…STUMP SUPPORT- SCORES WINS

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

Trump Twitter Support Is a Boon in GOP Primarieshttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/08/15/trump_twitter_support_is_a_boon_in_gop_primaries.html By Sally Persons

Donald Trump has taken a lot of grief for his tweeting habit from critics who view his use of the social media platform as decidedly unpresidential. He’s receiving only gratitude, however, from Republican candidates he’s endorsed on Twitter – candidates who’ve ridden Trump’s endorsement to decisive primary victories.

With over 50 million followers on Twitter, the president’s outreach spans a far greater cross-section of voters than the standard political database — though not all of his followers are Republicans or even politically engaged. He has endorsed 44 campaigns so far and many say they’ve seen a tangible difference after a getting that seal of approval on Twitter. His input elevates the candidates’ national profile, increases donations, and can even help change the outcome of some races.

In last month’s Republican gubernatorial primary runoff in Georgia, Trump’s surprise endorsement may have been the key to tipping the tight contest in the favor of Secretary of State Brian Kemp. He entered the July runoff as the underdog and ended up winning by a double-digit margin.

“The president’s endorsement was like pouring gasoline on a fire,” Kemp told RCP. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle had been widely considered the favorite throughout the race and had the support of Georgia’s GOP establishment, including term-limited Gov. Nathan Deal. Cagle won the first round of voting in May by 13 points but did not top 50 percent, forcing the runoff; he ended up losing to Kemp in July in a landslide after the president weighed in.

ANTI-SEMITISM, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Chelsea Clinton: Legalized Abortion Has Added $3.5 Trillion to the Economy By John Ellis

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/chelsea-clinton-legalized-abortion-has-added-3-5-trillion-to-the-economy/

No one can accuse the Clintons of failing to prioritize profit over ethics. Giving a gross demonstration of this familial trait, Chelsea Clinton applauded abortion by claiming that the Roe v. Wade decision has added three and a half trillion dollars to the economy. Pro-life people have been aware of this for a long time, but it’s nice, I guess, to see the other side admit, from their perspective, that there is a price point that justifies killing babies.

In a speech given at “Rise Up for Roe,” an event aimed at expressing feminist displeasure with the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court, the younger Clinton opined:

Whether you fundamentally care about reproductive rights and access right, because these are not the same thing, if you care about social justice or economic justice, agency – you have to care about this.

It is not a disconnected fact – to address this t-shirt of 1973 – that American women entering the labor force from 1973 to 2009 added three and a half trillion dollars to our economy. Right?

The net, new entrance of women – that is not disconnected from the fact that Roe became the law of the land in January of 1973.

So, I think, whatever it is that people say they care about, I think that you can connect to this issue.

Of course, I would hope that they would care about our equal rights and dignity to make our own choices – but, if that is not sufficiently persuasive, hopefully, come some of these other arguments that you’ve expressed so beautifully, will be. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gov. Andrew Cuomo Shocks Audience: America ‘Was Never That Great’ By Debra Heine

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/video/gov-andrew-cuomo-shocks-audience-america-was-never-that-great/

Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) “drew gasps from the crowd” on Wednesday when he belittled America in response to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” Cuomo said during a speech in New York. He went on to argue that only when Democrat priorities like women’s rights are realized will this dark, oppressive dystopia known as the U.S.A. ever become great.

“We have not reached greatness, we will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged, we will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution,” he said.

Cuomo, the son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo and older brother of CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo, is widely believed to be a contender for the Democratic nomination for the White House in 2020.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro called on Cuomo to apologize, saying, America “with its imperfections, has always been great.”

“This governor is so determined to distract voters from his failed policies and corrupted administration that he’s willing to dismiss the steady, determined march of the American people, making and remaking the greatness of America. Mr. Cuomo owes the nation an apology,” he said in a statement. “He should be ashamed of himself.” CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

John Brennan’s Security Clearance Revoked by Trump By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/john-brennans-security-clearance-revoked-by-trump/

WASHINGTON — A day after the former CIA director fired off a tweet criticizing President Trump for calling Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog,” the White House said Trump revoked the security clearance for John Brennan.

Former top intelligence and national security officials retain clearances in case an instance arises in which they’re called to consult with their successors in a classified setting. Last month, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he’d encouraged Trump to revoke the clearance of Brennan, who had just tweeted that Trump’s press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

“John Brennan and others partisans should have their security clearances revoked. Public officials should not use their security clearances to leverage speaking fees or network talking head fees,” Paul tweeted after he met with Trump.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the time that Trump was “also looking into the clearances” of other critics: FBI Director James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe — though Comey and McCabe no longer have clearances to revoke, per exit procedures at the FBI.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

British Labour Party Crackup: A Warning of Things to Come BY: David Isaac

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

https://freebeacon.com/blog/british-labour-party-crackup-warning-things-come/

Britain’s Labour Party has undergone a kind of gravitational collapse. Its fringes have fallen into its center, forming a black hole that is a maelstrom of anti-Semitism. Hard to imagine that only a decade ago it was the most mainstream of parties. Its leader Tony Blair preached a mixture of social justice and free markets. The speed with which Labour has fallen to extremists should serve as a wake-up call.

For Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, it’s been the summer of discontent. He struggles with a series of embarrassments—all self-inflicted—the most recent of which is the disclosure that he spoke at the wedding of Palestinian Authority adviser Husam Zomlot in 2010. (Zomlot is often accused of denying the Holocaust. Whether or not he did, he’s made so many obnoxious, ahistorical remarks typical of PA members that it hardly matters.)

The Zomlot wedding discovery, which hit the papers on August 12, followed the more damaging revelation the day before that Corbyn had taken part in a 2014 ceremony in Tunis honoring Arab terrorists. Corbyn can be seen holding a wreath at a cemetery monument which includes the names of those who perpetrated the 1972 Munich Massacre. Pathetically, Corbyn confederates attempted to defend his participation by claiming he was there to commemorate 47 PLO members killed in a 1985 Israeli air strike, which is bad enough. (It emerged that their monument was in a different part of the cemetery.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Are People Giving Peter Strzok Their Money? By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/peter-strzok-gofundme-why-are-people-giving-him-money/I thought I was bad with money.

Every now and then, I’ll read some news that makes my eyes bug out and my jaw drop to the floor because I can’t believe how stupid it is.

This week, it was the news that fired FBI agent Peter Strzok has raised over $400,000 for his legal costs and lost income via a GoFundMe campaign.

Let me rephrase: Actual people with actual brains actually decided that the best use of their hard-earned cash was to just give it away to this dude. I really can’t believe it. I mean, I thought I was bad with money until I saw people were giving theirs to Peter f***ing Strzok. I can spend my money much more wisely than that, and I’m saying that as someone who once spent $20 to have a single Slurpee delivered to her apartment so she didn’t have to go outside.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Problem with the Left’s Attempts to Redefine Racism By Jonah Goldberg

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

The notion that racism is solely about institutionalized white power simply doesn’t compute for most Americans.

People are making this so complicated.

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times editorial board hired a technology writer, Sarah Jeong. When it was revealed that she had tweeted barbs against white people, conservatives formed a Twitter mob to demand her dismissal. While a few on the right said — or claimed — that they were offended by the substance of her tweets, the overriding passion derived from an understandable outrage about liberal double standards.

The argument took a familiar form: “If a white or conservative person said something like this about any other group, her career would be over!”

Many liberals responded that conservatives just don’t get it. There is no such thing as anti-white racism because racism is all about power. Whites — or white men — have power and other groups don’t.

Perhaps because this theory defies lived experience, progressives offered a new defense: “We don’t really mean it when we attack the pale patriarchy.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The Trial of the Blind Sheikh Ties in to a New Mexico Child-Abuse Case By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on August 15th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/blind-sheikh-trial-link-to-new-mexico-child-abuse-case/

Named in the prosecutor’s letter in 1995, Siraj Wahhaj lost his grandson earlier this month to the mayhem of a squalid compound run by fundamentalist Muslims.

In an awful story out of New Mexico last week, five adults were arrested on charges of abusing children, conduct that allegedly resulted in the death of one child. Apparently, the defendants are fundamentalist Muslims who were running the squalid compound as a parallel society and preparing for violent action against law enforcement, the education system, and other institutions. It is alleged that this included training at least some of the children.

The child who died, Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, was the disabled four-year-old son of the ringleader, a man named Siraj Wahhaj. The child, whose father allegedly abducted him from his estranged wife several months ago, appears to have died during an attempted exorcism — the defendants having allegedly deprived him of his medications and attributed his health problems to possession by demons. (A New Mexico state judge has rejected prosecutors’ request to detain them without bail. Sigh . . .)

When reporters googled the main defendant, they found that he is the son and namesake of Siraj Wahhaj, a well-known (some would say notorious) sharia-supremacist imam who runs a mosque in Brooklyn (Masjid al-Taqwa). That got my phone buzzing because the mosque featured in the terrorism case I prosecuted in the 1990s against Omar Abdel Rahman (the “Blind Sheikh”) and several other jihadists; Siraj Wahhaj the elder appeared as a character witness for some of the defendants.

The elder Wahhaj has for decades been an unapologetic extremist (America is “a garbage can . . . filthy and sick,” etc. etc.). Naturally, he was once invited to give the opening invocation at a session of Congress. (More sighing.) Although incendiary statements he has in fact made are occasionally reported, what is most often reported about him is something that is not true: viz., that the United States government, in a letter written by your humble correspondent some 23 years ago, accused him of being a co-conspirator in a terrorism plot that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

This urban legend never dies because the purpose of so-called co-conspirator lists is poorly understood. The misconception is that such lists, which are standard fare in big conspiracy cases, amount to public accusations of guilt. That misconception is reinforced by unidentified “former terrorism prosecutors,” who recently told the New York Times that my list was “later criticized for being overly broad.” To the contrary, these lists are a form of discovery for preparation of the defense at trial; they are meant to be inclusive because they preserve the prosecution’s discretion to offer important evidence and are not intended for public consumption.